Fitness Marketing: Client Financed Aquisition

One thing Gym Owners consistently misinterpret about their fitness marketing is their Return On Investment when scaling quickly, and fail to measure their two SEPARATE engines of growth accordingly.

Here’s the thing – It’s NOT easy to consistently add 30-150+ new members per month. You don’t just ‘run some ads’ or ‘hire someone new’.

That kind of half-assed delegation of responsibility gets business owners nowhere.

If you expect to outperform 90% of the marketplace, you can’t take a short-sighted approach miss-managing numbers, failing to track data, or making uncalculated ad-hoc decisions that ultimately steer you AWAY from your objective. You need a solid lead generation plan that includes smart fitness marketing, a valuable service to up-sell and knowing where to spend your money for maximum growth.

Being in the top 10% literally means you must beat the 90%. There are no shortcuts.

Engines of Growth

The way I look at growing a gym quickly are with two separate engines – front end (FE), and back end (BE).

Your front end is a super sexy, no-brainer offer designed only to attract a cold prospect to the business. This is typically a 21 day, 28 day or 6 week ‘challenge’ (insert whatever name you feel suits).

Your back end is the long-term, higher-ticket offer which produces the sustained life-changing results.

From a monetary standpoint, the front end offer has no other function than to pay for the cost of acquisition of that client.

Engine #1 – Client Financed Acquisition Engine

Basically, sell 10 x 21 day challenges for a total of $2,990, and that full $2,990 should be spent on paid ads, sales and fitness marketing teams or activities, and fulfillment on getting that ‘challenger’ to sign onto the back end.

You are NOT supposed to make a profit here. If you are, you’re either not spending enough on growth, are exceptionally great at signing new people, or you’re already full.

Engine #2 – Your Profit Engine

If you deliver a valuable service and implement the 4 key back end upsell stages correctly, there is no reason you shouldn’t convert 60-80+ % of these ‘challengers’ into a back end offer.

Those 4 upsell stages are:

1. Day 0
2. Mid-challenge
3. End of challenge
4. Reactivation

Selling 70% of those 10 challengers on the back end, at $50/w x 52 weeks = $18,200.

Here’s where the fork in the road occurs…

Gym Owner 1: “Aw shit I spent $2,990 on my fitness marketing and only made back $2,990. Waste of time, I best pull the pin and jump to the next thing.”

Gym Owner 2: “Hell yeah I just added $18,200 in new business! Let’s turn it up!”

The GYM FUNNEL is:

Enquiries > Consults > Front End Sales > Back End Sales > Referrals > Reactivation.

Failing to grow comes from failing to measure the ENTIRE funnel and it’s ROI, not just the fitness marketing at the front end.

If you pay to generate more enquiries you must measure the ENTIRE funnel, not the short-sighted immediate gains.

In my gyms, I am more than happy to take this one step further and spend $5000 to make back $2990 in the front end 21 day challenges, which some would see as ‘losing money’.

Because I know that on the BACK END I make back $18,200.

And that is why I, and our top Gym Owners, grow a lot larger, a lot faster than most.

They use vision and numbers instead of fear.

Riley Stewart is the CEO of More Gym Members and has devoted his life to helping gym owners and personal trainers fill their businesses, find out more here.